


Bilgewater

by rey_exe



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Twins, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Cults, Eventual Romance, Memory Loss, Multi, Murder Mystery, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Southern Gothic, the solo twins to be exact
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 21:02:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14340843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rey_exe/pseuds/rey_exe
Summary: "I feel like this place is going to be the death of me." Rey mumbles absently, gazing out at the murky horizon without quite seeing it. If she could unfocus her eyes enough, maybe, just maybe she could see something other than grief and horror between those gnarled trees.Kylo seems to consider her words carefully, his expression strained as he comes to stand at her side."This place is going to be the death ofallof us."---------Following the mysterious death of her best friend, fifteen-year-old Rey is forced to flee the small southern town of D’qar in search of a fresh start. Only the demise of her beloved caretaker Ben Kenobi coaxes the young woman back to her home nearly a decade later. Her arrival carries a tempest that unearths the hollow town’s past and present horrors, threatening to pull Rey under the bayou she had fought so desperately to escape from.





	Bilgewater

**Author's Note:**

> Me @ myself: don't you dare start a new fic when you have an entire series you need to work on  
> also me: laughs manically as i hit publish 
> 
> Anyway here is the southern gothic fic nobody asked for. This has been rolling around in my brain forever and I've finally started piecing it together. It's heavily inspired by True Detective, which I've been binging recently. Needless to say, this is going to be INCREDIBLY dark. It's sort've my therapy fic and will explore the repercussions of trauma as I've seen it in myself, in those around me, and from what I've learned from research, therapists and other professionals. Please mind the tags. I'll be adding more as I write this & will add warnings in each chapter as I see fit, namely where sexual abuse is concerned.

 

 

 

"To realize that all your life - all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain, it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream, a dream that you had inside a locked room. A dream about bein' a person.... And like a lot of dreams, there's a monster at the end of it."

 

* * *

 

 

_Brambles tug at too-thin arms, nipping at exposed flesh until her clothing is speckled with bright red stains. Her feet nearly send her sprawling as she trips over exposed tree roots, but still she presses onward. Physical discomfort is not nearly enough to slow her down as the baying of hounds rings through the tepid summer air._

 

_Flashlight beams cut through the darkness around her, flickering like lightning bugs through the underbrush. They are accompanied by distorted voices, some of them calling her name, some of them wailing in despair. Even the pleading voice of her guardian isn’t enough to stop her in her tracks. Something far more sinister is following at her heels. She can feel it breathing down her neck._

 

_Ahead she hears another cry, high pitched and frightened, one that quickens her pace and silences those at her back. ‘Rey!’ Cutting through the trees, her bare feet meet water, sinking deep into mud, splashing noisily through the bayou. The scum that coated the top of the murky water so dense she could have sworn it was earth._

 

_‘Rey! Please!’_

 

_Rey tries to call out as she wades deeper into the mire, to assure them that she is on her way, but no words fall from her lips. She reaches up with trembling fingers to press against her mouth, wincing as they catch on the barbed wire that gagged her._

 

_A pained whimper erupts from her chest, harmonizing with the brutal cry that rips through the swamp. Her movements become frenzied, the world around her warping and twisting, bleeding into inky blackness. She scans the gloomy, star studded horizon, slipping on the mud and rocks beneath her in her haste to find the source of such a blood-curdling lament._

 

_The woman loses her footing, tumbling forward into the foul water with a strangled gasp. Hands shoot out to steady herself, only to catch something soft and cold beneath the ripples. Rey frowns, brow puckering as she clutches at the odd form. Narrowing her eyes through the dark, she tugs lightly, fighting to regain her balance._

 

_A mottled grey face blooms from the star-laced water, bloated and terrible even in the half light. It’s the face of a girl, a face eerily similar to her own. Bubbles erupt from her gaping mouth, that bloodcurdling lament spewed right along with them. Bruised lids pop open to reveal yellowed, unseeing eyes that peer up at her in fear and agony._

 

_Rey jerks backwards as dead hands clamp around her wrists, dragging her towards the terrible, dead face of Kira Kryze. The barbed wire around her mouth tightens as she shrieks in terror, the taste of copper thick on her tongue, gagging her as the shadows rise up around the girl and the corpse..._

 

“It sounds like this dream correlates with the phone call you received yesterday.”

 

Rey’s unfocused eyes flick back to her therapist, blinking hard as she forces herself into the present. Even in the smog infused city, she can taste the foul water on the back of her tongue. Perhaps that was just the bile from the previous night though. She could still feel that suffocating darkness and the frozen grip of her best friend a she dragged them both down to the depths.

 

“It’s more than likely, right? I mean, nothing else could have triggered it... I haven’t had dreams like that in _years_.” They were the reason she was there in the first place, after all. Those grisly nightmares she could never quite remember. They’d began vividly and in earnest shortly after she’d left D’qar, night terrors that left her nearly incapacitated with exhaustion during the day.

 

Only a friendly intervention from her dear friend Finn several years back had propelled her into the office of a psychotherapist. _( Heavy eyes droop, her car swerves, Finn yells and grabs the steering wheel before they careen off the highway. He drives her to Norra Wexley’s every week after and pays for every session. )_

 

Doctor Wexley sits upright in her chair, cool eyes fixating on her patient as she jots down another note on her pad without looking at it. Rey could swear the woman was able to see right through her sometimes, which is likely the reason she rarely scheduled appointments anymore unless absolutely necessary.

 

This was _frighteningly_ necessary.

 

Upon waking, Rey had turned on every light in her apartment and sat huddled on her ratty sofa, shivering before the TV. It took well over an hour and every single grounding technique she’d been taught to calm her down. The moment she did, her shaking fingers punched in a text, which was replied to only five minutes later, confirming an appointment for later that afternoon.

 

Rey’s intuition had always been keen, growing up as she had. She knew things. It was her gift, of sorts.

 

Old Ben Kenobi was saved in her speed dial, and the number that flashed across her screen was not.

 

The moment she saw that fucking area code, she just _knew_.

 

Just as she knew the news of his death had been the catalyst here.

 

The young woman runs a hand over her weary face, wanting nothing more than to lace her fingers through her hair and tug so hard it all came out. Rey had done well for herself the last decade. She could think of home and withstand the occasional news her he would send without dissolving into a fit of despair. She wasn’t the scorned and frightened girl she once was. She could handle things damn it…

 

Wexley seemed to understand where her rampant thoughts were beginning to stray and was quick to interject “You’ve come a long way, Rey. This isn’t a regression. These feelings, these experiences are normal. I would have been surprised if you DIDN’T react as you did. This is a harsh blow.”

 

Rey nods silently, resting her chin on her hand as she stares off into space. She got that, but it sure as hell didn’t make her feel any better.

 

Where Rey came from, one didn’t air their dirty laundry because one always had their shit together. Those that didn’t or COULDN’T comply to those unspoken rules were considered frail and weak. The idea was so saturated that even if those around you cared, they were so over burdened with their own repressed issues they didn’t have the capacity to take on yours as well. It was why they were all rotting, why _she_ was still rotting.

 

She’d read Doctor Wexley the same spiel time and time again until she sounded like a broken record. She can’t tolerate vulnerability in herself. It makes her skin crawl to be seen as anything less than a pillar of strength, even before a person who was paid for this nonsense. It’s why she keeps her mouth shut as her therapist barrels onward with her words of wisdom.

 

“This is not a sign of weakness.” Wexley punctuates her words with a sharp tap of her pen against her notepad “You know this… I don’t think you know how _proud_ I am of you though.”

 

THAT catches Rey’s attention. She nearly gives herself whiplash meeting her eyes.

 

She could count the people who were proud of her on one hand.

 

Doctor Wexley smiles kindly at her and leans forward in her chair “You could have done things the easy way. You could have said you weren’t going to show up and you could have sold that house from here… But you bought that plane ticket. Rey, that’s a huge step. When you first came to see me, that girl would NEVER have considered what you did today.”

 

Now it’s Rey’s turn to smile, though it doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “I just wonder if I don’t have ulterior motives for doing this. I owe Ben that much but...”

 

There are some tragedies you never stop punishing yourself for, regardless your level of involvement in them. There are some people that will never stop punishing you for them too. There was a vicious cycle of injury, self-inflicted and otherwise that stemmed from that old town. Six years of therapy couldn’t rectify her need to crucify herself. Maybe it was all some subconscious ploy to drag her back.

 

“I think your heart is in the right place.”

 

Rey isn’t sure her heart exists in this place at all anymore.

 

She nods in agreement regardless and clambers wearily to her feet. Her hour was up and she had a lot of preparing to do, physically AND mentally.

 

“Thank you, Doctor Wexley… I guess I’d better go pack for a funeral.”

**Author's Note:**

> A short snappy set up! I'm a quarter of the way done with the next chapter so it should be up soon! In the meantime you can find me on tumblr @ bluuurey! Kudo's and comments are fabulous! Please let me know what you think <3


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